Measuring the Centralized Mindset in Scratch

Nikolos DimitrisKomis Vassilis

Department of Educational Science and Early Childhood Education,

University of Patras,Greece

Centralized Mindset

Theory developed by Mitchel Resnick

Students tend to apply centralized control when they model distributed phenomena

Centralized mindset

Guzdial noticed a similar approach in object-oriented programming with Smalltalk

Centralized Mindset and Social Network Analysis

Centralized network De-centralized network

Centralization measures

• Closeness centralization: How close is a node to all other nodes

• Betweenness centralization: How important is a node in the paths between other nodes

• (We used the Pajek Large Network Analysis software)

Scratch to network

Scratch to networkOffline:http://github.com/dimnikolos/Ghoul/Online:http://scratchgraph.herokuapp.com

Measures of projects

19 projects from non-CS students

High centralization measures

High centralization measuresCloseness centralization: 1

Betweenness centralization:0.5

Closeness is indicative.

High centralization measures

• Betweenness centralization is low despite the centralized nature of the projects

Low centralization measures

Low centralization measures

Low centralization measures

Conclusions

Projects that feature high closeness centralization have a centralized nature. The same was not true for betweenness centralization.Students submitted projects with both centralized and decentralized controlThe transformation of the structure of a Scratch project to a network provides new insights in programming with Scratch

ReferencesBatagelj, V., Mrvar, A. (1998). Pajek – program for large network analysis. Connections, 47–57. Brennan, K. (2014). Constructionism in the Classroom: Three experiments in Disrupting Technocentrism. In Proceedings of Constructionism 2014.Freeman, L. C. (1979). Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification. Social Networks, 1(1979), 215–239. Guzdial, M. (1995). Centralized mindset: A student problem with object-oriented programming. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 27, 182–185. Resnick, M. (1992). Turtles, termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds. MIT Press.Resnick, M. (1996). Beyond the Centralized Mindset. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5, 1–22.Scott, J. (2000). Social Network Analysis: A Hanbook. SAGE.

Imageshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auklet_flock_Shumagins_1986.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/NetworkTopology-Ring.png/330px-NetworkTopology-Ring.pnghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Darnir_redhat/Sandbox#/media/File:NetworkTopologies.png

Thank you!